At the intersection of Silicon Valley and Wall Street, there is a staggering piece of data: a crypto startup with only 11 employees created $1.1 billion in profit, averaging nearly $100 million per person. This "profit efficiency" is over 20 times that of the popular AI unicorn Anthropic or Claude.

This company is Hyperliquid, which holds a 70% market share in the global on-chain perpetual contracts market.

Its founder Jeff Yan, 31, won the International Physics Olympiad gold medal at 18 and graduated first in algorithms from Harvard University. He started with $10,000, traded in Puerto Rico using a television as a monitor, built a trading company with thousands of times returns, and then founded Hyperliquid.

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Jeff has not written a book, but in his limited interviews, we distilled his core "31 Life and Business Rules." Among these 31 rules, 11 are about "rejection"—rejecting the temptation of money, rejecting VCs, rejecting marketing noise, rejecting excess personnel. While most founders obsess over "growth," Hyperliquid is obsessed with "subtraction."

Here are Jeff Yan's core philosophies for reshaping on-chain finance:

1. View of Money: Money is Just a Number

As a former high-frequency trader, Jeff has an unusual desensitization towards wealth.

1. Money is just a number. Trading will first teach you this.

2. "I really have no place to spend money."

3. If you can't answer "What value did you create," then leave.

4. Do things you find interesting and that are valuable to the world. The rest will follow.

2. Team Management: Ultimate Elitism

In a team of 11, only 2 have crypto industry experience, and most are winners of math and computer science Olympiads.

5. Hiring the wrong person is worse than not hiring anyone.

6. Smart, driven, principled, honest. That’s it.

7. Out of 11 people, only 2 have crypto industry experience. Most are math and computer science Olympiad winners.

8. Don't micromanage. Give a complex task and then step back.

9. The more a person can do independently, the better.

10. A team is too small to do everything, which forces you to focus only on the most important things.

3. Product Philosophy: Listen to the Real Voices

11. Build a product that users like and are willing to pay for. It's that simple.

12. Listen to real user feedback, not so-called "user experts' opinions."

13. Progress = value obtained by users, not money made by investors.

14. If it’s not something that must be done by you, don’t do it yourself.

15. Applications serve users, and systems serve applications. This is two completely different scales of thinking.

4. Attitude Towards Financing: Firm Resistance to VCs

Hyperliquid turned down $1 billion in funding, which is nearly unimaginable in the crypto industry.

16. Four principles: no investors, no paid market makers, no reserved shares for the team, no insider privileges.

17. If a VC owns 50% of a network, it will become a lifelong scar for the protocol.

18. VCs create a false illusion of "progress": valuations go up, but the product pays the price.

19. "If Bitcoin had taken VC financing back then, it wouldn't be Bitcoin."

20. Refused $1 billion in funding. Neutrality is more valuable than money.

21. Airdrop: 31% of tokens are distributed to users, with an initial value of $1.2 billion. The team has no shares on the first day, and VCs will never have shares.

5. Personal Discipline: Puritan-style Living

22. Working hard is more important than working smart. Long-term honing will naturally yield quality.

23. Work 14+ hours a day, 100+ hours a week.

24. Fixed attire: Lululemon shorts + T-shirt. 15 pairs of shorts, 10 T-shirts, 3 of each color.

25. Cut your own hair.

26. Rest time: Sunday mornings.

6. Strategic Thinking: Winning by "Doing Less"

27. It's okay not to know the endpoint. More importantly, continuously step in the right direction.

28. Do not list on any CEX. "Those who really need it will come themselves."

29. No marketing department. The community will do better.

30. No big launch events: when ready, just go live in the production environment.

31. Win by "doing less." Less hype, less noise, more engineering, more real users.

AiCoin Data Insight: In this crypto cycle, engulfed by capital and hype, Jeff Yan and his Hyperliquid prove the victory of "fundamentalism." With no marketing department, no VCs, and no CEX listings, they have created over $800 million in annual fee revenue through pure engineering capability.

As a professional crypto asset data analysis platform, AiCoin continuously tracks the on-chain capital flow and major transaction movements of Hyperliquid for you.

Through the AiCoin terminal, you can:

Real-time monitoring of HYPE on-chain buyback data: Accurately grasp the deflationary effect brought by the AF mechanism.
Track changes in HIP-3 non-crypto asset OI: Gain insight into the inflow trends of TradFi capital.
One-stop authorized trading: Seamlessly connect Hyperliquid in AiCoin and enjoy a smooth decentralized trading experience.

Practical operation is super simple:

Step 1: Open Hyperliquid BTC/USDC K-line on AiCoin

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